


Love It If We Made It

by areyoureddiekids



Category: IT (2017), IT (2019), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Lives, Eventual Smut, F/M, M/M, Oblivious Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, but then he like...k n o w s, floralreddie, gay idiots, major spoilers for it chapter 2 be warned bitches, originally posted on my tumblr, richie pines, they're just morons really aren't they
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-10-14 14:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20602643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoureddiekids/pseuds/areyoureddiekids
Summary: Eddie lives. Richie stumbles through being in love with the man who used to be, and could still be, his best friend, and maybe something more. This is how they find each other again as adults, in the aftermath of finally killing It.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is from my Tumblr, floralreddie, and is originally published there. I just really want Eddie and Richie to be gay and happy together okay.

The hospital lights flicker, yanking him out of whatever glitching thought process he had found himself in. He knew he would always do things like that; find himself toeing through warped and horrible thoughts at the most terrible of times. Probably something to do with not having his ADHD diagnosed until late into his adult years. 

Probably something to do with being in a hospital.

Probably something to do with the terror and pain still circling his mind. 

Probably something to with cradling Eddie, brown-eyed and pale-faced Eddie, to his chest, screaming at the others that he wasn’t fucking dead yet. They couldn’t leave him there, not Eddie. Eddie who had stumbled back into his life, married to a fucking woman and so terribly fucking the same in the best of ways. Eddie, still shorter than him and still tripping over his well-timed insults in a way that had Richie wanting to ruffle his fucking hair-

Eddie who had hovered over him, blood dripping from his mouth and pupils shrinking to pinpricks, smile frozen on that face, as It’s fucking claw had torn through his chest.

Richie scrambles away from the image, terrified of finding himself in those deep and panicked sobs once again. He had felt frenzied in a way that reminded him of being a kid, of holding Eddie’s young face in his own young hands and screaming for Eddie to look at Richie and _only _Richie. 

Richie can’t remember the drive here. He knows that Ben had driven, shouting amongst the screams of Bev and Bill as they held Richie’s jacket to Eddie chest, and Richie cradled Eddie to him, sobbing and shouting and saying Eddie’s name over and over, as if that would somehow bring him back to consciousness and close that gaping hole in his chest.

He shouldn’t be alive, Richie knows. He wonders if it’s some fucked up voodoo shit, like how they’d bullied that fucking _thing _into dying. Richie had believed hard enough that Eddie could not be dead, and so Eddie was not dead.

Eddie could _not _be dead.

‘Rich’. He jumps sharply, and his buttoned shirt actually _cracks _at the motion. He dreads to think the shit that is on him, that had dried the shirt into such stiffness. He looks up, glasses smudged and cheeks stuff from dried tears, to find Bev standing in front of him. She’s holding a steaming polystyrene cup. She’s filthy and tired and everyone in the waiting room is looking at the five of them. Bev holds out the cup, her smile tentative. ‘Here. I got you this, honey’.

The others, who he had hardly looked at since Mike had practically pushed him into the stuff chair as Doctors and Nurses carted Eddie away, look blearily their way. Richie takes the cup and downs a sip before even thinking on it. He hardly reacts to the burn. He nods to Bev, smile tight, and she nods. She sits next to Ben. 

Richie wonders if they know. They’re looking at him like they know; like they understand why, despite all of their worry about Eddie, Richie needed warm beverage more than anything of them. 

He thinks of a time when shaking fingers had gripped a sharp edge and carved R + E into the Kissing Bridge. 

Hell, Richie didn’t even _remember _knowing. All it took was Eddie calling him a fucking asshole in that over the top, rushed way of his to send Richie grinning and reaching for Eddie’s brown hair, and he had remembered countless time of doing the exact same thing. _Any reason to touch him_, Richie thinks. Sure, yeah, he’d known for fucking ever how far into the closet he was, but it had taken that moment of looking into pissed off, large brown eyes to remember who exactly had made realise there was a closet to be inside of. 

Fuck that. Fuck the fucking clown. Fuck this shitty town for making him hate that part of himself so fucking much. 

It’s hours, Richie thinks, of them all sitting there. Mike and Ben leave for an hour, at one point, to grab spare clothes and talk to the receptionist for any updates. Richie isn’t sure what he does in that time. He does a lot of staring at the shiny floor. He does a lot of replaying the joy of Eddie’s face as he had grinned down at him, so fucking happy and brave and, _‘I did it, Rich! I think I killed It!’_

At one point, Bill slips into the seat next to him, pats his knee and says nothing. Bill was always good like that. He remembered that from when they were kids. Bill didn’t need to say anything to assure you. He was their appointed leader, and he knew each of the Losers well enough to know what they each needed in times of desperation. 

Richie shudders out a breath. 

Eddie can’t die. 

It’s Bev who takes him into a disabled toilet after Bill tried pulling on Richie’s shoulder for a solid thirty seconds. He doesn’t want to leave his seat, and he doesn’t give a flying fuck if he stinks of sewer and blood. What if the Nurses come back, and he isn’t there? What if Eddie needs him?

In the end, it is Bev crouching before him, finally beseeching his floor focused gaze, and whispering a, ‘Please, Rich’, with that familiar blue, kind gaze that has him nodding, eventually. He drags himself up with her, his clothes sticking to his skin in the worst of ways, and follows her lead.

The others watch, he knows. Their sympathy makes him irrationally pissed off.

The toilet is spacious enough, and Bev brings up wet toilet roll to wipe away at his grimy face. She looks cleaner than he must, and Richie wonders when she had snuck off to the toilet to change and wash her face. How long had he been staring at that floor? It is when she takes off his glasses and wipes under his eyes that the bubble in his chest bursts, and a dry sob falls forward before he can stop himself. 

She mutters an, ‘Oh, Rich’, and circles him in a hug that is so utterly Bev that it makes him want to cry all the fucking harder. She doesn’t throw any empty promises his way, she merely traces circles on his back and allows his wet tears to catch in the space between her neck and shoulder. 

When he pulls away, wet-faced and snotty, he bites out, ‘He _can’t-’ _And isn’t quite able to finish the sentence.

Bev nods, eyes on his, and Richie knows she knows. 

He changes his shirt, and realises that it’s one of his. A patterned maroon one that clashes with everything. Ben must have gone out of his way to check each of their rooms for their clothes. Typical fucking Ben. 

He washes as much dirt off as he can, and Bev waits for him the whole time. He loves her, he remembers. He loves her kindness and her no bullshit attitude, and it breaks his bitter fucking heart that he forgot all of this shit. But he has time, with her, to know her now. What if he doesn’t get that chance with Eddie? With Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, who’s wit and backchat and zero tolerance for Richie’s bullshit slotted so perfectly with Richie’s essence. 

They leave the disabled toilet behind, shoving Richie’s soiled shirt into the waste basket, and Bev’s breath catches audibly in her throat when they see a Doctor standing before the remaining Losers. Each of the men standing before the Doctor, making a mock semicircle, and Richie’s heart stutters and breaks and fixes itself when he sees Ben crack a quick relieved smile and fall like a sack of shit into the nearest seat to him. 

Richie approaches with tripping feet and glasses slipping down his nose, and when Mike sees him coming, he talks over the Doctor to Richie and Bev, his nod slow and breath deep. ‘He’s okay. He’s _okay_’. 

Richie cries again. He’s settled with the fact that he’s going to be doing it a lot today. Odd, he thinks. He never cried. 

Maybe when he forgot them, he forgot how to. 

The Doctor asks if they want to see Eddie, who is on a fuck ton of drugs and barely away and recovering from invasive as shit surgery, and Bev is the one who pushes Richie forward. The others nod before she can even say, ‘You go first, Rich’.

He does. He doesn’t have time to trip over his own nervousness. He has to, _needs _to, see proof that this is Eddie. Not some fucking…fucking mimic of Eddie. He needs to see a living and breathing Eddie to know that this is real, and that Eddie was not leaving him again. 

He goes with the Doctor, through brightly lit hallways and ignoring concerned gazes at his state. 

When the Doctor shows him into the room and pushes open the door, Richie cannot help but think that despite Eddie state, pale and covered in wires, his hair a disarray and his eyes blearily open, that he is the most wonderfully fucking beautiful thing Richie has ever seen. 

‘Hey, asshole,’ Eddie croaks.

Quite unsurprisingly, Richie chokes on a sob, allows the door to swing shut behind him, and answers with a strangled, ‘Hey, Spaghetti’.


	2. Chapter 2

Richie comes to find that Eddie is, for lack of a better word, trashed.

He’s a doped up mess, loopy from meds and pain and shock, the words fall from his mouth a lisp-ridden ruin of half-memories of what had just transpired. In the five minutes that Richie has been sitting at Eddie’s side in a stiff chair, his hands pressed between his knees to stop himself from reaching for Eddie, Eddie has asked him three times if the others are okay.

‘You guys didn’t…didn’t call Mya, did’ya?’ He’s nestled into the white pillow, eyes hazy and white blanket pulled up to his chin. Richie stares at him, answering after a long pause. He needs to stop doing that. He needs to drop losing his thought process in staring at Eddie, alive and doped up and not even aware of what he’s saying. It reminds Richie of an almost lost memory, involving the two of them locked away in the clubhouse and a bottle of cheap vodka. 

Richie blinks into awareness and clears his throat, whilst fingering his glasses back up his nose. Myra. Eddie’s wife. His brain fucking _hurts_. ‘Nah. Told the Docs to wait until you’d woken up, Ed’s’. He’s not sure which of them had decided that, seeing as no one was sure Eddie was going to wake up at all. Probably Mike. Richie figures Mike had known that they would need time to think up a lie of what had happened to Eddie…if Eddie had…had-

Richie swallows. 

‘You’re bein’…bein’ fuckin’ _weird, _asshole. That clown do some shit to my face, or something?’ Richie shakes his head frantically and, yeah, he is being a bit fucking weird. He can’t _talk_. Eddie frowns sleepily. ‘Remember you…you dragging me out of there. Thanks, Rich’.

His eyelashes are fluttering. Richie doesn’t want him to close his eyes again. He remembers, for the first time, what had really happened down there. In his worry of Eddie, he had hardly thought of how he and Mike had all but dragged Eddie out of that place, Eddie’s blood wetting his hands and his desperate pleas in Eddie’s ear to stay alive falling to deaf ears.

He looks at Eddie again, at the clean face, bandage and all, and chews on his words. ‘Don’t thank me for that shit, man. What was I gonna do? _Leave _your ass down there?’ He laughs, short and forced, and quickly swallows his false smile when Eddie peers at him. Annoyingly fucking perceptive, that was Eddie Kaspbrak. Even as kids, he had been the one to always know when Richie was being weird. 

‘Bein’ fuckin’ weird,’ Eddie slurs once again, shifting and wincing and closing his eyes for the briefest of moments. Richie knows he won’t be awake for much longer. He knows Eddie needs rest. Richie looks him over for a quick second, eyes flashing to wear the blankets likely lay on top of thick bandages, to where Eddie’s pale hand lay on top of the covers. So easy to reach for.

Richie doesn’t move.

Eddie opens his eyes, his breathing slow. He blinks to the door, brow furrowed, and murmurs, ‘The others here? They’re…they are _okay_, right? You’re not fuckin’ lying, or some shit, Rich-?’

‘I thought you were gonna _die, _Eddie_’._

The words leave him in a rush of air, a sudden need to tell Eddie this. He needs Eddie to know that he cares, that he was terrified that he was so close to dying, that he is so, so fucking in lo-

Eddie stares at him, blinking blearily away from the door and looking back up at Richie. He stares and stares, eyes big and brown not changed at all. Richie stares right back, and he knows he probably has that manic, dear caught in headlights look that he’s never quite been able to train to not happen when he was worried or shit fucking scared. And, yeah, little spitfire Eddie Kaspbrak scared the shit out of Richie Tozier. 

Finally, Eddie says, ‘I _didn’t_, Rich’.

It’s what Richie needs to hear, he realises, because the sigh turns into one of those fucking horrible choked sobs that he’s been welcoming for the past however many hours. He feels like an idiot for the first time since allowing those tears to break from him at the idea of Eddie being so horribly fucking hurt. Maybe it’s because, in that time, Eddie had been awake to see him such a fucking wreck. 

He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes furiously, and he’s almost thankful that he can’t see Eddie for that split second.

When he puts the glasses back on, Eddie is looking up at him, eyes half-lidded, and murmurs, ‘I…I was _brave _though, huh?’ He’s falling into that drug induced sleep again, Richie can see, and he’s half guilty for hogging all of Eddie’s time before the others can see him. 

Richie wants to reach for that hand that lays there, fingernails dirty in a way that would make sober Eddie fucking frantic. Instead, he swallows tightly and nods, dark hair falling over his forehead and fists clenched between his knees once again. ‘So fuckin’ brave, Ed’s’. He thinks of Eddie, hovering above him and smiling and grinning and so damn proud. ‘Braver than anyone I know’.Eddie’s eyelashes flutter again. He’s going. Richie allows him to. His body sags. ‘You’re not gonna…leave, right?’ Eddie’s eyes are already closed.

Yeah, Richie is a fucking slave for Edward Kaspbrak, because he wastes no time in nodding, despite Eddie’s closed eyes, and answering, ‘Never leavin’ your sorry ass again, Spaghetti-Head’.

Richie isn’t sure if he’s seeing things, but he swears he sees a twitch of Eddie’s mouth before he, finally, falls into a deep sleep.

Richie stares, chest tight and jaw clenched. He thinks he should have said something. He thinks, really he should had dragged Eddie down to kiss him the moment the man saved him from that hypnotic state in the sewer. Brave Eddie Kaspbrak, saving Richie’s ass. He should have kissed him. He should have. 

He wonders what Eddie would have done. 

Richie stands, ready to get the other Losers and allow them to see their friend, asleep but alive and well. He means to. He really does. But he allows himself a moment, just a moment, to stare down at the sleeping man in front him. The man who had survived a knife to the face and a fucking claw through the chest. The man who had nagged his way into Richie’s life to aggressively that even some fucking up curse couldn’t entirely rid him from Richie’s mind for those decades. He may not have remembered Eddie, but he certainly knew he was missing _something_. 

He clenches his fist at his sides. He does it again. Then again. He breathes in clinical air and, finally, reaching for him. For Eddie.

Richie allows himself the briefest of moment to touch the mans hand, fingers running along an exposed vein, before stepping solidly back and turning for the door.

Eddie was alive. He was going to be okay. Richie would _never _forget him again. Maybe the death of that fucking thing was allow them, all of them, the gift of never forgetting each other. 

Eddie did not want his wife with him.

At the same time, he wanted Richie with him.

Richie, a man so entirely used to disappointment mixed with a life of stale jokes never written by him, does not want to hope what that could mean. 


	3. Chapter 3

Richie cancels his dates in Reno. 

He cancels a lot of the dates, actually. He couldn’t give less of a shit about his Trashmouth Tour, because Eddie needed and him and Eddie had asked him not to leave. 

Jesus. When did he turn into such a little bitch.

Bill leaves first, to be with his wife. He holds Eddie’s hand, Eddie who is stronger everyday, and tells him that he’ll see him soon. Maybe they can all feel something different this time around; a hint that they won’t be forgetting each other again. 

Bev is the one who answers the the frantic ringing of Eddie’s phone, which was telling them that Myra Kaspbrak was on the line _again_. Richie doesn’t follow her to the waiting room as she ducks away. He stays with Eddie, who crinkles his brow and stares at the closed door with a look that reminds Richie of how he’d look at Mrs Kaspbrak. Scared. Worried. Reprimanded. 

Eddie shuffles into his bed when Bev leaves on that fourth day, his eyes shiny and his mouth down-turned. ‘I should answer her,’ Eddie says. He’s more awake lately. The drugs are less strong, and the risk of infection had past. Richie had even left the day before to shower and change at the Inn. The others had stayed there for the past few nights, but Richie wouldn’t.

Richie sits in the chair beside Eddie, as usual, and replies, ‘She sounds a fucking nightmare, Eddie. How’d you manage to find an exact replica of your mom, huh?’

‘Fuck off, Richie’.

He said he wouldn’t leave Eddie, so he _wouldn’t_. 

It is the same day that Bev and Ben leave. Together. Bev tells Eddie that Myra knows he is hurt, but not what happened. She has a pinched look on her face, one that reminds Richie of when Mrs Kaspbrak had called Bev a _dirty girl. _Eddie stares, jaw working, and it goes unsaid between all of them that it could not be more obvious that Eddie does not want his wife here. 

‘Does she, uh, does she know where I am?’

Ben stands behind Bev, a watchful angel over her shoulder. Bev shakes her head, her smile a little sad. ‘I didn’t think you wanted her to know’. 

Perhaps Bev can sense these things, Richie thinks. Perhaps the pale ring of skin on her ring finger says more than Richie will ever know. 

They bid Richie and Eddie goodbye soon after that, promising to call when they reached their homes. They would see each other soon, they promise, and Richie believes them. Richie nods, smile tight, and hugs them both. He’s happy for them. He is. It’s just…Myra Kaspbrak’s constant calls are a harsh reminder that Eddie was someone else’s. He had no right to be the one lingering at Eddie’s side. 

Bev is small when he hugs her, and she reaches up to murmur in his ear, ‘Be patient, Rich’.

He pulls away, looks down at her, and yeah, of course Bev knows. 

Mike comes and goes. By the sixth day, Richie can see his elation when he brings the both of them food from the outside. Richie can see the itching in Mike’s muscles to get away from Derry. He felt the same itching. He was happy for Mike, really. The man had stayed in this shit heap longer than Richie had ever thought anyone could. Now, with It gone, Mikey was free. 

Richie’s back hurts from sleeping in only the hospital chair, and he feels pretty creepy for watching Eddie fall in and out of sleep like he does. But they talk, and that’s the best bit. Richie finds out that Eddie’s business is actually well and truly fucking dull. Eddie insults him for not writing his own jokes. They steer clear of the topic of Myra. When Bev had handed Eddie his phone back, he had flicked it off with a blank expression.

Richie had pretended to not notice. 

It’s the seventh day, a week after the fight and the tears and the near death of Eddie, that Eddie starts Richie out of his warped thoughts about random shit. ‘Why are you still here, Richie?’

Richie blinks, pushes his glasses up his nose, and tries very hard to keep his pale ass skin from turning fucking pink. Eddie is looking up at him, eyebrows draw together and mouth down-turned, and Richie doesn’t know what to the fuck to say. In the end, he settles with, ‘What - you want me to go, Spaghetti? Go on, I can take it’.

He can’t. He really fucking can’t.

Eddie shakes his head, eyes widening, and Richie is reminded that Eddie is just so fucking cute. Cute, cute, cute. ‘No!’ Eddie says, wincing as he tugs at his wound. Richie still hasn’t seen it. He leaves whenever the Doctors and Nurses come in and begin tugging the hospital gown over Eddie’s pale shoulders. ‘I’m just _asking_…you don’t have to be here, you know’.

‘Yeah, well,’ Richie says. ‘I want to be, okay?’

Eddie stares. ‘Okay’.

‘_Okay_’.

After that, they both stare at the rerun of _E.R_ on the TV hovering above the bed. Richie glances at Eddie, and he swears he sees a smug smile. 

_Cute, cute, cute._

-

On the eighth day, Eddie is discharged. He leaves with hoodie and bottoms the hospital had given him, and smacks Richie’s side when the other splutters on how oversized the garments are on the smaller man.

‘You’re fucking drowning in that shit, Ed’s’.

‘I’m five fucking _nine_, douchebag. And don’t call me Ed’s’.

He leans against Richie, his form hunched a face still just a little too pale, and Mike picks them up from the car park in his beat up car. It smells of old cigarettes and air fresher, and Richie is so fucking careful when he helps Eddie into the front seat. He can feel the muscles twitch underneath his fingers as he moves Eddie, and he wants to smile.

_See_, he wants to say. _You are strong, Ed’s._

Mike is kind and open, as always. He asks what meds Eddie had been given. He asks if he’s in pain. He asks if the Doctors had stopped inquiring too deep into how all of them had ended up in such a state. 

Finally, he asks, ‘You two heading home today?’

Richie, who is rubbing his forehead and thinking that he’s too fucking old to have been sleeping in a chair for the past week, looks sharply at Mike at the question. Home. Home for him was Malibu. Home for Eddie was New York. With his wife. So fucking _far away. _

‘I mean_,’ Richie says. _‘Probably. Or tomorrow’.

There is a pause. Mike breathes deeply, as if knowing his question has settled a darkness onto the car that he had not intended it to. ‘Eddie?’

Eddie shifts. Richie stares dead ahead. The silence goes on a bit too long, so he shares a look with Mike, before turning to look over his shoulder and peering at Eddie, who is holding something in his hand.

It takes Richie a moment to understand that it’s his wedding ring. 

Eddie stares and stares at it, before shrugging, reaching to put down the window, and throwing the thing out into the air without a seconds thought. Richie barks out a surprised laugh, whilst Mike nearly swerves into a fucking bush. ‘Shit, Ed’s!’ Richie whoops. 

‘You, er, sure about that, Eddie?’ Mike says, though Richie can hear the smile in his voice.

Eddie leans back, brow raised and smile smug, and replies, ‘Pretty fuckin’ sure, Mikey’.

He looks at Richie, smile and all, and Richie laughs again. His chest feels tight and he forgot what a fucking drama queen Eddie was, and he wants to reach over to him, to touch him and to hold him and to kiss that fucking smile off his face-

Yeah. Eddie Kaspbrak was fucking _brave_. 

-

There’s a knock at his door.

It’s not Mike, he knows that much. Mike had bid them farewell, making them promise to call him once they were both at their respective homes. He was heading to Florida, he said. Soon. Away from this fucking town.

Richie had slapped him on the back and grinned.

When he opens it, he sees Eddie there with a billion fucking suitcases and his body hunched to not pull at his bandages. He stares at Richie, mouth half open and eyes wide, and Richie stares right back. He knows he probably looks manic. He always does when he’s nervous. It’s those fucking eyebrows. 

His glasses slide down his nose. 

‘You, er-’ Eddie coughs, darts his gaze to the right, and then looks back up at Richie. ‘You wanna come to…to New York and help me leave my wife, Rich?’

Richie stares.

Richie laughs.

Richie buries his face in his hands, shoulder shaking.

Richie says yes. 


	4. Chapter 4

He remembered carving the letters into the Bridge. 

It was that day, the horrible fucking day that Pennybitch had stirred up those feelings inside of him. The ones that were saved for when he was curled up in his single bed, his glasses off and blurred vision blinking into the darkness of his room. Those night were saved for thinking of boys, of girls, and of why one felt so different to the other.

He remembered realising he loved Eddie. It wasn’t anything spectacular. It was a simple blink over those jam jar fucking glasses of his when he was fourteen, as he looked at Eddie, who was scrubbing furiously at his dirty knees with a God damn _hanky _that he had produced from his pocket. 

That was Richie realised that, yeah, looking at his best friends pale skin, big brown eyes and thinking he was _cute _was, in actual fact, probably a little gay.

Gay.

Richie swallows, older than he was back then by a long fucking shot, and staring at the old letters etched into the tree. They were faded, less sharp, but were still there. Real.

_R + E_

He had been terrified when he had etched them into the fence of the Kissing Bridge. What if someone came? What if one of the Losers saw and knew what it mean? What if Bowers, Bowers who Richie had fucking _impaled_, had walked in on Richie doing this sacred, secret thing?

He is here now, though. He feels like he owes that to his younger self. Sure, yeah, maybe it’s a little weird when he kneels down, knife at the ready, and begins etching over those words. Maybe it’s a little fucking sad. Maybe he shouldn’t be pining after a man who wasn’t even divorced yet. But he was, and he always fucking would. If seeing Eddie again, after so many years, told Richie anything, it was that he was still hopelessly in love with the fucking idiot.

Richie stands back, looking at the freshly carved wood and scoffing a little. If the kid who carved those letters knew his older self would still be pining after the psychotic little asthmatic, he’s pretty sure said kid would kick Richie in the shin. 

Maybe he deserved it. 

-

He arrives back at the Inn, rolling his eyes sky fucking high when he sees Eddie standing outside, leaning against his Eiffel Tower of suitcases. He has his arms crossed in that angry little way, and his brow is scrunched up grumpily.

He pulls up beside Eddie, red car glinting in the sunlight, rolls down the window, and says, ‘Are you fucking serious?’

Eddie blinks rapidly, as if to say: am_ I_ fucking serious, Tozier? ‘You were gone for fucking ever, asshole. I thought you’d ditched me-’

‘Jesus Christ, I said I had to do _one _damn thing-!’

‘-Fucking’ weirdo. Since when were you all shitty and mysterious, Rich? The fuck were you - what the fuck are you doing? I can carry my own bags-’

Richie is out of the car, rolling his eyes every two seconds at Eddie’s dramatics, and hoisting the first of the suitcases off of the ground. Eddie’s car had been a rental, so they had decided to use Richie’s for the 7 hour drive from Maine to New York. ‘Jesus fuck, Ed’s, what the heck do you have in here? The clowns decomposing body-?’

‘That is _not _funny’.

Richie cracks a grin Eddie’s way as he dumps the suitcase into the back of the car. ‘It was a little funny’. Eddie stares, all big brown eyes, tight frown and crossed arms, and Richie is in love with his fucking idiot. Terribly fucking so. Richie grabs the other suitcase, stumbling and dragging it in a way that, yeah, might be a little overdone, but he is a sucker for that annoyed look on Eddie’s face. _Cute_. How could the man still be so fucking cute?

Eddie’s grumbles by the car, back a little hunched and hand hovering over his wound, beneath layers of clothing, and when Richie slams the boot shut with a flourish and a grin, all Eddie can do his stare at him and say, ‘This a fucking dumb car, Rich’.

Richie tilts his head, smiles and replies, ‘You know what’s dumb? Becoming a fucking Risk Analyst when you’re Eddie Kaspbrak and think walking down the street is a freaking _risk_-’

‘Fuck you, asshole. Fuck you’.

They climb into the car, and Eddie proclaims, as he shifts to make himself comfortable, that the car is cleaner than he thought it would. Richie, in return tells him that despite popular opinion, Richie is a fucking adult and knows how to look after himself. 

Eddie looks at him then, face in that familiar frown that Richie wants to wipe off his face, and says, ‘Maybe you aren’t half as much of a fucking wreck as I thought you’d be’.

As Richie starts the engine, he sighs and replies, ‘Thanks, Ed’s’.

‘Don’t fucking call me that’.

It is five minutes later as Richie tightens his hands on the steering wheel and they’re so fucking close to be out of Derry, that Eddie mutters, ‘Thanks for this, Rich. Really’.

Richie stiffens and looks at his briefly, and his glasses slide just a little down his nose. Fields pass by, and he thinks he remembers walking through some of them when he was a kid. He nods, swallows, and clears his throat. ‘Least I can do and, you…you basically _saved my life_ back in that sewer, Spaghetti. Ol’ Richie would have been as _skewered _as you were back there-’

Eddie is still staring at the side of Richie’s head. He can feel it. ‘Yeah. I mean. You’re welcome’.

Richie nods. He clears his throat again. ‘You nervous?’

Eddie shrugs, then hisses in pain, and Richie looks at him in mild alarm. He watches as Eddie shifts in his seat and slouches to, Richie assumes, not hurt himself anymore. ‘Not nervous, more…guilty. I dunno. Myra is a _nightmare_, but she’s looked after me the past twenty years. And being back here, in Derry, remembering everything-’ His brow contracts and he swallows, and Richie looks quickly back at the road. Yeah. Remembering shit. He can relate. 

‘I get’cha,’ Richie says. He sniffs and shifts his face against his shoulder, trying to get his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. 

Eddie looks at him, but Richie keeps his eyes ahead. He can see a sign that says EXIT DERRY coming up. ‘Yeah?’ Eddie says. 

Richie nods. ‘Yeah, dude’. He swallows, breathes, and then says, ‘Y’know, what I said in the sewers still stands. You’re brave as shit, Ed’s’.

‘Oh’. Eddie is still staring at him. Richie watches as they pass the sign, and leave Derry behind them. ‘Thanks, Rich’.

Richie nods, then freezes and nearly crashes the fucking car when a lone finger appears in his vision, and his glasses are pushed up his nose. He has a flash of memories of Eddie doing nearly the exact same thing in their use, sometimes using his toes as they dangled in that hammock in Ben’s Clubhouse. 

He’s sure that when he turns to Eddie, who is settling his hand back into his lap, his are as wide as fucking saucers, and his face is turning a funny fucking shade of maroon. Eddie blinks at him, all innocent and shit, and nods when Richie chokes out, ‘Thanks’.

He glances at Eddie once in the minutes that follow, and catches another one of those secret fucking smiles.

Richie decides that Eddie Kaspbrak is going to give him damn heart failure. 


	5. Chapter 5

The journey goes fast, and perhaps it’s because Richie is terrified of the moment it’s over. After this...then what? Does he say goodbye to Eddie, as he did the others? Because...because he’d been fucking ecstatic when Eddie had asked him to come to New York with him. It meant just that little bit longer with the moron. 

They stop once, at a McDonald’s. Richie get a Big Mac Meal, and Eddie gets one of those Wrap Meals. They eat in the car, and Richie watches him from the corner of his eyes as Eddie scoffs his food with the usual careful vigour. Unlike Richie, Eddie could eat quickly as fuck without getting food all over his clothes. 

This was illustrated when Eddie had looked at him, his napkin screwed up in his hands, and said, ‘You’ve got ketchup on your face, shit for brains’.

That was hours ago, now, and they’re pulling into the busy streets of New York, Eddie directing them to Brooklyn, when Richie says, ‘What’re you gonna do after this?’

It’s perhaps too serious of a question to come from Richie, because Eddie glances at him with some ounce of annoyance, as if pissed that Richie had brought up the elephant in the room. Eddie shrugs after a moment. ‘Who the fuck knows. Let me leave my wife first, then I’ll figure that out’.

Richie doesn’t ask again.

They bicker as they drive through New York, as Richie has always hated this fucking place. It’s cold and grim and the building are too fucking high. Malibu is open and pretty and it’s always sunny. Richie wonders if Eddie would like it there.

He banishes that thought before he asks the man something stupid. 

‘I said take a fucking left!’

‘You did not! You did fucking not!’

They almost crash about five times. Eddie grumbles that all five times had been entirely Richie’s fault, and Richie shoots back that maybe if Eddie didn’t wave his arms about like a fucking idiot, maybe he would be able to see where he was going. 

They arrive at the apartment building in a pretty swanky part of New York, and Richie shifts in his seat and tries to keep the stupid comments at bay as Eddie sighs and just...sits there.

Richie looks at the man a few times, taking in the furrowed brow and the hands clasped in his lap. ‘Er, Eddie-’

‘Gimme a fucking second, asshole’.

Richie nods, fingers his glasses back up his nose, and settles back into his seat. They’re in the carpark under the apartments. Eddie had whipped out a fob that allowed them access, and Richie was half impressed that Eddie had actually done pretty well for himself. Sure, his house in Malibu was pretty fucking nice, but who’d have thought Eddie would have ended up in busy and pretentious New York? 

A car drives past, and Richie sighs. ‘You know,’ he starts, jolting Eddie from whatever thought process he had been lost in. He stares ahead, at the number plate of the car in front of them, but he can feel Eddie’s hard gaze on the side of his face. He swallows. He hopes he doesn’t still have ketchup on his face. ‘Last girlfriend I had was like, I dunno, four years ago? Scared as shit when I broke up with her, because I reckon...well I reckon she fucking _knew _what was making us break up when I stopped being able to get it up in the bedroom, if you know what I mean. She was cool with it, when I told her that...y’know, that I’m-’

He swallows again, because maybe this rambling fucking story will give Eddie some bravery. He’d done it before, in the sewers. He could do it again. And maybe, maybe, maybe, this is what he needs. This could be some fucking breakthrough day for the both of them. Eddie can leave his wife, and Richie can admit-

‘Well, y’know, I’m _gay_’.

And there, yeah, it’s out in the fucking open now. It’s there, standing between them and Eddie is still staring at Richie is going to be able to memorise the fucking number plate in front of them, soon. Eddie stares and stares and Richie is just open to throw him some jazz hands and a, ‘Only joking! Ha, ha!’ When he sees movement, and peeks to see Eddie nodding, that serious look of determination on his face. 

Richie stares, half expecting a, _‘Well, okay. Not for me. See you later, Rich’. _Instead, slaps his knees, making Richie start, and slams open the car door with such vigour that it nearly whacks into the car a space over. ‘You’re right. Fuck. You’re right’.

And then he exits the car.

Slams the door.

And Richie stares after him as he walks briskly toward the exit.

Richie turns, blinks at the number plate, and says, ‘Well, that could’ve gone a lot fucking worse’.

-

It takes half an hour for Eddie to give Richie another fucking heart attack.

He practically slams himself against the passenger window, eyes wide and brow high and shirt a little rumpled. He yanks open the door and practically throws himself into the car, all the while shouting, ‘Go, go, fucking _go_-!’

‘What the fuck!’ Richie yells, scrambling for the keys and braking out of the half-sleep he had been drifting into. ‘What the fuck is _happening_!’

Eddie throws a bag onto the back seat and turns to Richie with a wild look. ‘Oh my God, will you just fuckin’ drive, dipshit - Myra is on her way down and she is _pissed _and-’

Richie sees her, then. A blonde woman, larger than life, with a floral dress on and a mean stomp to her walk. And she walking toward the car, finger waving and mouth moving. 

Eddie _whimpers and Richie is on the brink of some form of hysterical laughter. _‘What the fuck did you _say _to her?!’

‘Jesus fucking Christ, does it matter? Look, she’s fucked up people’s cars before, and she is fucking pissed at you right now-’

‘She _what_?’

_‘Will you just drive?!’_

Richie slams the keys into the ignition and the car revs to life, and he’s half laughing and snorting and Eddie is yelling and rolling down the window and shouting, ‘Myra! _Please _stop! You’ll have a conniption fit again!’

Richie is fucking _crying _over the steering wheelby this point.

She yells something in return, and Richie only catches the word _him _before Eddie is scrambling to roll up the window and they have to pause to wait for the barrier to rise so that they can get the fuck away from the stampeding Mrs Kaspbrak.

There’s a few seconds of silence as Richie heaves in his breathless laughter and Eddie stares stricken ahead, and then, 

‘Dude, she looked like your mom’.

Eddie bursts into a tirade of ‘fuck you, asshole’s and ‘you’re so fucking gross what the fuck Richie’ but Richie is too busy laughing, his head bowed over the steering wheel and his chest hurting and, shit, he hadn’t laughed like this in fucking years.

And then he nearly sobers up, because Eddie is joining in on his laughter. He’s fucking giggling, and Richie forgot _that’s _how Eddie laughs. It just breaks the both even more, and this time Richie nearly crashes a good fifteen times as they both stumble of their laughter and fuck, fuck, fuck, Richie looks at Eddie once, his glasses steamed up with laughter, and Eddie grinning and giggling and looking like a dork and-

Richie is so fucking in love with this idiot.

-

The laughter dies and Richie pulls up in a shittier part of Brooklyn that is somehow quieter, and they’re both quiet for just a bit. He waits for Eddie this time, that is until Eddie winces and breathes quickly and Richie turns to him. 

‘Shit! I forgot! You’re fucking hurt and you were running like that! Shit, is he fuckin’ stupid, she knows you’re hurt-’

Eddie is peering at him, arm settled over his stomach, and frowns at Richie. ‘Calm down, Doctor Tozier - oh, do not do your fucking Doctor voice, I swear to God-’

‘I _wasn’t _going to’. He was. 

A car horn blares. Eddie shifts again. Richie watches. ‘Guess that’s done then,’ says Eddie. He sighs. ‘I’ll send over the divorce papers once we get to L.A - oh, right, can I crash with you?’ He looks at Richie, all big brown eyes and serious fucking face, and that was always Eddie. Straight to the point, a mass of confidence to those who mattered. Richie wished he was like that. He could never be like that.

And Richie is a selfish shit, because Eddie is obviously upset and shit but this...this is like a fucking _dream_. He had hoped, fucking prayed, that Eddie would ask this. That maybe Richie wouldn’t have to offer and be turned down. But there it is, a question, a guarantee that they were not saying goodbye yet. 

So, Richie nods, clears his throat, and croaks, ‘Yeah, dude. Whatever. You wanna earn your keep? I got a bunch of underwear that needs washing-’

Eddie wrinkles his nose. ‘I somehow don’t doubt that’.

Richie snorts. Eddie stares. ‘You good?’ Richie asks in the end, to which Eddie wrinkles his nose in a way that Richie tries very hard to not find endearing. 

In the end, Eddie nods. ‘I am. Says a lot I guess’.

‘Yeah,’ Richie agrees, not sure what else to say. ‘Hey, uh’. He doesn’t know how to say it, doesn’t know how to ask. ‘Do you wanna like...drive? Road trip it for a couple of days. Because I sure as shit know I’m not ready to face my manager who is _pissed _I’ve missed so many shows, and I bought this thing when I came out the other side of the airport and I kinda need to get it back to L.A somehow, but I was going to ship it, but, y’know, what the hell-’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Eddie says. ‘Shut the fuck up’. Richie manages a slightly affronted look. Eddie, in return, settles back into his seat and shrugs, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘I’ve never really been out of Derry or New York. Fuck it. Yeah. Let’s fucking do it’.

Richie snorts. ‘My word. Look at you. Rid of the old ball and chain and ready to take the world by the horns-’

‘Shut up, asshole’.

Richie grins, starts the engine, and nods when Eddie says they should probably stop somewhere to grab food out of state. And he’s fucking excited. A road trip. he’s always wanted to do one that lasted more than a fucking day, and this would take days. Days. Of being alone. With Eddie. Eddie who had agreed to this. Eddie who wanted to stay with Richie. Eddie who was looking at him now, as they pulled out of their space, and-

‘The fuck you looking at?’ Richie drawls, indicating to the car behind him. 

‘You’re gay,’ Eddie says, as they join the queue. Richie stiffens, swallows, and nods. He so rarely said the words to people or outside of the confines of his bedroom, where he would look grumpily into a mirror. Eddie, the man who had no idea that he was the one who had Richie having this epiphany when he was a kid, now knew. 

Richie nods. Eddie hums. 

‘Knew you talked about your dick way too much to be straight,’ he says instead, and Richie gapes when he turns to look at the man in the car with him.

He catches, for the billionth time, one of those secret little smiles as Eddie looks away. 


	6. Chapter 6

Why Richie thought it would be a good idea to go on a forty fucking hour road trip with Eddie Kaspbrak is a God damn mystery to him. 

Eddie moaned. He bitched. He ridiculed Richie’s driving and he wanted to take the most obscure fucking routes possible. He didn’t use a map app like a normal person, either. No, Eddie decided to buy a fucking poster sized map at the first place they pulled into to get gas station they pulled into. 

And this was just four hours worth of the road trip.

Eddie is practically stabbing the map with his index finger now, his sharp voice cutting through Richie’s skull. ‘_This _exit will take us via that poppy field I googled. The _fuck_. Don’t give me that fuckin’ look. _You _wanted to do a road trip, I’m not gonna stare at the fuckin’ freeway the whole way to L.A, dipshit’.

Richie kinda thinks he has a point with that one. He’s starting to think he just likes winding Eddie up. The way the man scowls, all sharp and annoyed and so reminiscent of the fiery boy from Richie’s youth…it was just too fucking cute. Because, even if Eddie is bitching and moaning and being a complete control freak, Richie doesn’t think he would change any of this for the world.

Five hours into the drive, as Eddie draws little circles on the map that is basically up to his chin and nearly swallowing his whole form, Richie blurts out, ‘What did you mean when you said your lovely wife was pissed at _me_?’ Because, yeah, that had been bugging Richie for a few hours now. ‘_You’re _the one who ditched her for a week, came back and dumped her spacious ass-’

‘_Jesus_, Rich!’ Eddie snaps, lowering the map with a whip and ruffle. Richie peers, one hand on the steering wheel, and tries not to guffaw at Eddie’s annoyed look. Cute. So fucking cute. 

‘Jesus Rich,’ Richie muses. ‘Like Jesus Christ, but better-’

‘You gonna tell me where you disappeared to for a fucking hour back in Derry?’ Eddie snaps and, shit, the little asshole was so fucking good at catching Richie out. No one could do it like Eddie could. Eddie stares. Richie scowls at the winding country road. ‘Didn’t fuckin’ think so. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine. For now, how about you shut the fuck up and put a better station on-’

In the end, it’s Eddie who flips the radio stations, until they find one that is dedicated to pop tunes that Richie hates to love. Eddie, on the other hand, has no issue with bobbing his head and humming to Taylor fucking Swift as he circles places on the map.

Richie is lost in thoughts of Bev and her kind smiles and her knowing looks and her parting words, when Eddie says, ‘We’re taking the South route, right?’ Richie stretches and nods, half wondering the area surrounding New York state was so fucking boring. ‘Can we go via Roswell? 

Richie looks over to him, half forgetting now that Eddie was all grown and had his own business and all that shit…well, forgetting what a fucking nerd Eddie had been in their youth. There was a reason they were the fucking Losers. He snorts, Eddie scowls, and Richie replies, ‘Wanna go alien hunting, Eduardo?’

Eddie is quiet for a moment. ‘Technically, It was an alien, y’know’.

Richie turns to face him so quickly that they swerve on the road, and Eddie swears and grapples for the map. He glares at Richie, whilst Richie laughs and says, ‘Holy fucking shit, Ed’s, you’ve got a damn point’.

-

They find a motel that is half decent and passed Eddie’s cleanliness rating (after visiting about five different travel sights that rated the place, much to Richie’s impatience) on the outskirts of Ohio. It’s simplistic and rustic and there’s a stuffed squirrel sitting on the desk. As the two men stand before it, Eddie wrinkles his nose and Richie snorts. 

The woman who checks them in peers at the two of them, and Richie has that clawing feeling in his gut that comes with people looking at him like they _know_. Like how the fucking clown had made him feel. He throws the cash her way quickly, after asking for one night, and all but trips over his own fucking feet when she says, ‘We only got one double bed room left, I’m afraid’.

Richie wants to reach across the fucking desk and yank the perm right off her fucking head. The way she’s look at them, with peering eyes and a pruney mouth and with words that hint there was no fucking way two men could share a room, because even though he and Eddie aren’t…even though they’re not-

Eddie snatches the room key from her wrinkles grasp, forcing Richie from his silent gay panic, and says in a voice that is both calm and yet not calm at all, ‘Thank you, ma’am. I’m sure we’ll manage just fine’.

It’s only halfway to the room, a floor up, with Richie trailing behind Eddie that Richie even considers what this means. He had been so caught up in the woman and her nasty gaze and how fucking sick he was of feeling like this was wrong, that he hadn’t even considered what her words meant.

He was sharing a bed with Eddie.

He’s sure he has the horrible manic look on his face that his manager is always telling him to control when Eddie clicks open the door and they step into the room. 

‘I should have bought some fucking antibacterial wipes with me,’ Eddie snaps, already darting into the room to inspect every fucking surface of the place.

Richie watches Eddie, standing in the door, and thinks that this isn’t a big deal. It _isn’t_. They had shared bed before, when they were kids. _But Eddie didn’t have nice arms and a killer jaw and fucking stubble back then, Trashmouth. _

Huh. Yeah. Eddie was hot. Not just cute. Hot.

What a lovely realisation to have on the brink of sharing a bed with his childhood crush. Fantastic. Brilliant.

‘You wanna shut the fucking door, dickweed?’ Eddie says, peeling back the covers of the bed and shooting Richie a _look_.

Richie stumbles to do so.

He feels like his legs are too fucking long for his body.

-

Eddie is weird.

Like.

He’s weird.

He showers after half an hour of inspecting the room, after Richie goes to grab their bags. He brushes his teeth twice. His combs his hair with an actual fucking comb. 

He does so as he stands in the middle of the motel room, Richie still sitting awkwardly on the bed, and seems all too consumed with his million mile an hour speech about motel room cleanliness to notice that Richie is eyeing Eddie’s white, damp shirt and slick wet hair with something teenagers might call _heart eyes._

‘You have a fucking comb,’ Richie finally says. 

Eddie stops his tirade of the different bacteria’s to snap, ‘Yeah, and so what? Maybe _you _should fucking invest in one. You look like you have a birds nest on top of your head, Trashmouth’.

Richie grins. Eddie swallows an annoyed smile.

They eat ramen Eddie had bought from the gas station, and use the bowls and kettle supplied by the motel. Eddie washes the bowls with boiling water first, because of course he does. The noodles are salty and surprisingly good, and they flip on the small TV and sit on the end of the double bed, slurping away at their food.

‘I wanna see the Grand Canyon,’ Richie says suddenly. He turns to Eddie, who turns to him, and nods when Eddie nods. 

‘Cool,’ says Eddie.

Richie nods again.

He thinks this is something couples do. It totally is, right? Bev would be giving him that look right about now, and Richie is itching to talk to her. He thinks she’ll know what to say to calm his nerves and make him not such a fucking weirdo with Eddie. 

Jesus. _Why _was Eddie sitting so close to him?

The smaller man sighs and dumps his bowl on the floor, all the while letting on a small yawn and covering his mouth like a proper lady. Richie pretends not to watch. Richie also pretends to yawn, too, because he maybe he kinda wants to crawl into bed with Eddie, but he’s also fucking terrified to do so. 

He always did the things that were bad for him, and he’s pretty sure throwing himself into bed with his male friends who he was in love with who was going through a divorce from his wife was a bad thing to do, right?

Richie goes to get into bed as Eddie peels back the covers, clad in that fucking white shirt and some ridiculous silk pants, when Eddie gives him a funny look. Richie, for a moment, freezes. Shit, what if Eddie thought Richie was going to take the floor? What if he’s made everything super fucking weird? What if-

‘You’re getting into some fucking pyjamas. You cannot sleep in the clothes you’ve just driven in for eight and a half hours, Rich. _Jesus_’.

Richie blinks. Scoffs like he didn’t entirely forget to get changed in the midst of his nervous breakdown, and turns on his heel to rifle through his stuffed to the brim duffel bag. He can hear Eddie crawling into bed with little mutterings of dust and bed bugs as he yanks out a _Blondie _shirt and a pair of tartan sleep pants that his publicist got him for his Birthday. They’re comfy as shit and way more high brand than he would even think to go, but at least they’re not silk.

He makes a mental note to rip the shit out of Eddie for those tomorrow.

He faces the bathroom door as he tugs off his shirt with lightening speed, his glasses slipping down his nose and his skin pricking with the hyper awareness that Eddie was sitting in bed behind him and what the fuck, this was so fuckign domestic and weird and for fucks sake Tozier, calm down-

He yanks off his jeans, throws on the pyjama pants over his boxers, and clears his throat as he turns around.

Eddie is stuffed into bed, chin up the covers and dark brown eyes glaring sideways at Richie. He’s pink, Richie thinks. He’s pink and wide eyed and, fuck, don’t read into shit, Tozier, you’ll only regret it later. 

Richie crawls into bed, careful to stay far away from Eddie, and says, ‘We should call the others when we get to L.A. They’re all around that area, anyway’.

Eddie hums in agreement. They both stare at the ceiling.

And then ‘Have you been working out?’

Richie splutters genuine laughter into the quiet, so sudden that it actually makes Eddie jump. Of all the things he expected the man to say to him, it had not been that. And he can’t help it. he can’t help the jokes and the poking, because otherwise he’ll fucking preen under Eddie’s attention. ‘You checkin’ me out, Kaspbrak?’ He snorts, turning on his side to stare at Eddie.

Eddie eyes him, still flat on his back, and rolls his eyes. ‘You’re not a skinny fucking runt anymore, is what I mean,’ he said. He goes pink again. Richie is starting to become morbidly fascinated with adult Eddie turning that shade of pink. 

Richie laughs again. Eddie tells him to fuck off. Somehow, Richie feels relieved. That horrible fucking tension that he had placed into the room melts away, and instead of awkward silence as they lay next to each other, Richie grapples for the moment of humour, playing off of the jokes and Eddie’s swift comebacks until, finally he feels sleepy enough to say.

‘You set an alarm?’

Eddie grunts in affirmation.

They flip their respective lamps off and, yeah, it’s weirdly fucking domestic. Really, really fucking domestic.

And Richie…Richie eats it up. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u guys are gonna make me bust out in tears with all your nice comments i swear to gawd. also follow my tumblr @ floralreddie.

For just a second, waking up, Richie could be fourteen again.

It’s the familiar warm breath on his neck, the forehead mushed against his face, the leg thrown between his own, and the smell of shampoo and soap invading his fucking senses.

It’s Eddie. All Eddie. A tangle of Eddie that Richie would wake up to when he was a kid, after sneaking through Eddie’s window when he grew bored of his own home, and the two would slip into bed together because they were kids, and despite Richie’s horrendous fucking crush, it was _innocent_. 

His heart hammers now, as he opens his eyes and sees only a blur of brown hair. He wishes, for the millionth time, that his eyesight didn’t suck so fucking much. He hears the small snores that make his heart thud even harder, because he supposes some things never change. Richie had always secretly enjoyed waking up to Eddie’s small snores. Eddie’s light breathing. Eddie’s need to tangle his limbs and invade Richie’s space with little care. 

He worried for when Eddie wakes up. He worries that this isn’t okay, this is too much, this is something adult Eddie would not be okay with-

He doesn’t realise the chime of the alarm is cutting through his thoughts, until Eddie is stretching out a shaking yawn in his arms (Richie’s his arms, how nice did that feel?) and mushing a hand against Richie’s face and saying, ‘God, you still have the worst fucking morning breath’.

And Richie’s heart is hammering and he can see a blur of Eddie twisting away from him, probably to reach for his phone on the bedside table, and his knee is still pressed between Richie’s, and Richie can just about see where Eddie’s shirt had curled up his navel in his sleep and fuck, Tozier, do not get a fucking boner now-

But Eddie’s isn’t jumping away from him. He isn’t untangling their limbs and pushing Richie away from him. He’s grunting as he slams his phone onto the bedside table and turning back to Richie, and all Richie can see is a white and brown blue and he wonders what colour his face is right now, he wonders if Eddie still gets terrible bed hair, he wonders-

And then Eddie, Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, is shifting just slightly and leaning over Richie, so close that Richie can smell the soap of Eddie’s shirt and something to entirely _Eddie _as the man leans over Richie’s horizontal form, arm stretched over Richie’s head, and then he’s pulling back and Richie’s glasses are being slammed clumsily onto his face.

Richie blinks up at Eddie, who is half sitting still tangled with Richie, and his bed hair is fucking glorious.

Eddie blinks down at Richie, still not moving away from him, and says, ‘You looked like you were having a fucking stroke’.

And Richie’s sleep addled mind replies, ‘I think I was’.

Eddie wrinkles his nose. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

‘_Nothing_,’ Richie replies quickly, fingering his glasses up his nose. He’s still a little dazed from Eddie so close to him, body curling around his and-

_Do not pop a fucking boner, Tozier._

Eddie settles back into bad, and the way he is lying and and sighing tells Richie that Eddie wants a mere few minutes in bed, before they pack up and begin the next leg of their drive. Eddie stretches again, and Richie watches, and then Eddie grimaces up at the ceiling. ‘This mattress feels like it’s mad of fuckin’ _cement_’. Richie hums. He nearly fucking blushes when Eddie carries on with, ‘I slept way fuckin’ better than I have in years, though’.

Eddie peers at Richie. Richie blinks right back. He croaks out, ‘Same’, and Eddie cocks a brow, somehow smug and calm at the same time, and Richie thinks that it’s true. His sleeps are usually plagued by loneliness and pressing walls and worries of what jokes his team would shove down his throat now. A pressing feeling of knowing that his career wasn’t the only lie he was living. 

And this is too close, Richie thinks. Too close to Eddie understand that this is what Richie wants, Eddie curled around him and saying things like that and making Richie feel like he’s grasping at something he’s wanted forever. So, he quickly throws himself out of bed, slipping away from Eddie’s tangled limbs, and stumbles to the bathroom with a, ‘Dibs showering first’.

Eddie swears after him, and Richie grins as he slides the door shut. 

-

Richie drives for three hours, and he’s pretty fucking happy that they decided to leave so early. They see the sun getting brighter, and the landscape is nice. Eddie points this out every mile they go, until he’s grunting over that fucking map and saying, ‘I want to go to the Mark Twain National Forest’.

Richie bitches for a only a second, all in jest, and then he sees how much Eddie really wants to go to some dumb National Forest, so he says, ‘Fucking hell. How far away is it?’

They figure out they’re still three hours out from St. Louis, and from there the National Forest is about an hour and half South. Richie says yeah, fuck it, let’s do it. Eddie tries to hide his elated fucking grin that quickly turns into a scowl when Richie leans over to poke his scarring cheek and says, ‘You’re so fuckin’ _cute_, Ed’s’.

Richie is stumped to realise that he hasn’t spent this much time with someone one on one in fucking years. Even his ex-girlfriends would slip away after spending the night with him, but he’s days in with Eddie, from Derry to here, and he’s not sick of it. He’s fucking revelling in the feeling of not being so fucking alone. What is even more fucking weird as shit is how _easy _it all seems. 

They’re both different, Richie thinks, from when they were kids. Eddie’s a little more assertive and Richie is a little more put together, but it’s just like then. It’s that easy feeling of a sigh and a nod and thinking: _yeah, this is right. _

He tells his mind to shut the fuck up after that 

They end up talking about Eddie’s job, to which Richie tries very hard not to poke jokes at, and in the end Eddie says, ‘Look, asshole, I can fuckin’ see you trying not to yawn-’

‘I wasn’t!’

‘At least my work is my own fuckin’ work, you dipshit. Your jokes don’t even fuckin’ _sound _like you wrote them. Also, what’s with all the girlfriend shit? Your managers that fuckin’ stupid that they’re-’

‘Shoving me into the closet?’ Richie snorts. ‘You got it in one, Ed’s’.

He doesn’t say anything about Richie calling him Ed’s, and with a quick peek Eddie’s way as Richie takes the turning for St. Louis, he sees that crinkled nosed, burning anger in Eddie’s gaze that Richie knows not to make fun of. This is Angry Eddie, and Angry Eddie was a different breed for Cute Annoyed Eddie. ‘Fuckin’ _assholes_,’ Eddie spits, ruffling the map and practically sticking his nose into the creases of the paper. 

Richie straightens up and stares out the windscreen, is face hot all over. Sure, he knows it’s fucked up that his managers think the Gay Thing is gonna ruin is whole Trashmouth persona, and Eddie’s anger is kind of nice, but they haven’t mentioned it since the first time Richie told Eddie. 

Richie doesn’t say anything for a while and neither does Eddie, until Eddie looks away from his window and says, ‘You think Bev and Bill are gonna get married?’

Richie shrugs. ‘Dunno. They seemed pretty cosy, huh?’

Eddie hums. ‘Wonder if Bill’s upset’.

Richie thinks Bill, Big Bill and moral Bill, was kind of a dick for trying to get near Bev when he is totally fucking married. Then again, Richie selfishly followed Eddie to New York to help him split with his wife, so he can’t really talk. Jesus. He feels like the other fucking woman. Richie scoffs. ‘Bill knows. Y’saw the way he was looking at them. Ben’s been head over heels for Bev since he was a fuckin kid, that shit was bound to happen’.

And that’s a little too close to home, so Richie snaps his mouth shut and Eddie looks at him, and they don’t say anything for another half an hour. 

-

Richie is a fucking sap.

He always kinda known this. Ever since Remembering, he’s remembered the way he used to watch Eddie’s cheeks colour pink in their youth, and how funny it was to watch Eddie snort on his milk when Richie made him laugh too much. Now, though, he’s reached new levels of being a fucking Sappy Loser.

It’s four in the afternoon, and they’ve trekked about forty minutes around the outskirts of the Mark Twain National Forest, because they’re not dressed to do the proper hiking shit that people come here to do. The sun is low and the birds are chirping, and Eddie has tied his grey hoodie around his waist, and he’s wearing a dark blue polo, and his hair is ruffled in the wind, and Richie thinks he’s, like, beautiful.

Maybe it’s the scenery, because Eddie was right and this was a worthwhile place to stop, or maybe it’s how annoyingly fucking elated he is to be doing this with Eddie, but something about the smaller man seems to fucking glow today, y’know?

‘Y’know, you could take a fuckin’ picture, it’d last longer, douchebag. Do I have something on my face, or some shit?’ Eddie is turning to him, glare in place, and Richie just snorts and replies, 

‘Okay. I will. Gimme some Blue Steel, Spaghetti Man’.

Eddie bitches for about thirty seconds, before Richie says he’ll send the picture to the Losers group chat that they had all made, and Eddie complies with a grumpy pout. Then he grumps, ‘I’ll only do it if we take a fucking selfie. I’m not posing alone, asshole’.

And Richie nearly drops his phone from laughing, because even Eddie snorts when he says, ‘Calm down, Eddie Kardashian’.

‘Kedward Kardashian,’ Eddie says, and Richie loses his fucking shit. A family walking by hurry past, as if concerned at the two fully grown men nearly falling over themselves from laughter. 

They take a selfie with some waterfall in the background, and Eddie was smiling right up until Richie, grinning, ruffles his fucking hair. The end result is Richie with a shit eating grin, and Eddie half turned to him with angry words spilling out of his mouth. Eddie hates it. Richie loves it. 

Ben replies to the picture with his own one of Bev, clad in a bikini and shorts and sitting on some fancy fucking boat, her face crinkles in laughter and her own phone in her hand. 

Richie tries not to draw the parallels. 

-

They find themselves in a sleep looking motel nearer to park that is surprisingly not fully booked. Eddie orders Richie to get their shit from the car and meet him outside the Reception, and so Richie does as ordered because apparently he’s fucking whipped. 

He drags one of Eddie’s suitcases, the one he knows contains all of Eddie’s sleeping and bathroom crap, and his own duffel bag, and when Eddie blinks up at him and Richie joins him, the smaller man says, 

‘They only had one double room again’.

He’s staring up at Richie, face hard and mouth a flap line, and Richie swallows the hammering of his heart and says, ‘Cool. Whatever’.

He doesn’t say anything about the lack of cars in the car park. He doesn’t say anything, as he peeks into the Reception area, at the amount of keys hanging behind the desk. Maybe he doesn’t want his stupid fucking brain to whip up some imaginary _thing _that doesn’t exist. 

Maybe he’s kind of fucking sick of shit not going his away. Maybe he can learn to live with this, with merely having Eddie in his life again.

Maybe. 


	8. Chapter 8

Bev calls Richie the next day, and it works out kind of perfectly, because Eddie, after a good fifteen minutes of telling himself everything was okay, had gone to use the public bathroom at a rest-stop.

He has barely finished saying hello before she is ploughing on with, ‘Have you kissed him, yet?’ And Richie doesn’t quite know what to say, because he’s never explicitly stated he likes boys to any of the Losers other than Eddie. He chokes on his spit for a good ten seconds, and is only calmed by Bev saying, ‘Sorry. I didn’t meant to blurt it out like that, Rich’.

He knew that Bev knew, of course, but the clarification is enough to have his heart hammering in his chest. It was his best kept secret when he was a kid...and someone _knew_. Knew that he loved Eddie; that he fucking adored him. So, as Richie sits in his car outside the rest-stop somewhere near Kansas and Oklahoma, he answers with, ‘Shit, Bev. I don’t know. _No_. And who the fuck says I’m going to?’

So, Bev replies with, ‘Me. Ben. Bill. Mike was half sure you guys had already done it, with how he left you-’

‘I fucking hate you guys’.

Bev giggles, and the sound is welcome. Richie’s mouth tugs into a smile, and he half turns in his seat to see Eddie tumbling out of the side door of the restroom, flapping his hands in front of him and muttering angrily to himself as he stalked toward the car. ‘Eddie’s heading back to the car now,’ Richie says, eyeing the smaller man with a small smile. ‘He used a public restroom’.

‘_Stop,’ _Bev laughs. ‘Eddie Kaspbrak?’

Richie scoffs, and watches with a smirk as Eddie clambers into the car. ‘Y’know, I think he’s growing as a person in the time he’s spending with me,’ Richie started, only to have Eddie glaring at him.

‘Who’s that? Is it Bev? Give the phone here. Because I wanna talk to her, asshole - _give it’._

Richie doesn’t, in the end. It is Eddie clawing the phone away from his phone as Richie practically wet himself that has Bev sighing, and Richie can just about hear her when she says, ‘Hi, Eddie’.

Richie starts the car, flipping down the mirror to block on the afternoon sun, and listens as Eddie badmouths him down to the phone to Beverly, all the way throwing Richie sideways glances and swearing like a fucking trooper, and he can only imagine the grin on Bev’s face. 

-

He’s glad he didn’t mention to Bev that he and Eddie had now shared a bed two nights in a row. He’s super fucking glad of that, actually. He doesn’t think he can handle the others Losers talking about it, because even Richie is feeling overwhelmed with having two mornings in a row, waking up to an arm full of Eddie Kaspbrak.

The thing is...Eddie doesn’t seem bothered by the way they crowd each other in their sleep. He isn’t bothered by Richie’s morning breath, aside from snippy comments and rolling eyes, and he certainly isn’t embarrassed by the fact that he more often than not kicks his leg between Richie’s in his sleep. Richie, on the other hand, had woken up both mornings with his words stuck in his throat and his eyes trailing to the sliver of skin that would show when Eddie’s shirt rode up.

He felt like a fucking teenager all over again. 

The thing is, Eddie doesn’t help the situation at all. He’s always so damn close to Richie; always invading his space when they step out to get food, or stretch their legs. At one point on that third day of driving, they stop for an hour at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, where some girl stops Richie to ask if he’s Trashmouth Tozier, and Eddie rolls his eyes sky high, and Eddie is there, always there, pressed so close to Richie that Richie feels like he’s the one with fucking asthma.

Even though Eddie is totally not asthmatic, that was all Shitty Sonia’s weird parenting, but whatever. 

When Eddie shoves on a cowboy hat, Richie nearly passes out from how cute it is, and the words fall out of his mouth with their usual sting of teasing. Eddie stares at him, fingers playing with the leather brim, and then he smiles slightly and throws the hat onto the ground and points toward a row of pictures of horses, and leaves Richie who is on the brink of having a nosebleed.

They climb back into the car and Eddie ruffles the map, intent on finding a motel that was on Route 35, and Richie flexes his fingers on the steering wheel, nearly choking on his yawn when Eddie says, ‘Did you always know you were gay?’

Richie turns to him with so much force that he glasses nearly fall off his face. Eddie blinks back, all cocked brow and judgemental expression at Richie’s ridiculousness. He blinks, expectant, and Richie croaks, ‘Uh, yeah. I guess. Since we were kids. Well, like the Losers. All of us’.

He hates himself, sometimes. 

Eddie stares. Eddie nods. Eddie smiles. Eddie goes back to reading the map. 

Richie tries to level his breathing and tries not to think about the night before, when there had certainly been enough keys behind the desk in that motel for other rooms, ones without just one double bed, but he fails miserably. 

When Eddie points out a motel on the map, Richie is pink in the face and leans a little too far away when Eddie crowds his space.

-

This motel has plenty of rooms with two single beds, and Richie tries to act like this is fine, this is normal, this is better for the both of them, right? They’ll sleep better. There’s no reason for them to share rooms. 

He takes the keys from the man behind the desk at the rodeo themed motel, and Eddie looks at him with that quiet expression as Richie cracks jokes about riding bulls like he rode Eddie’s mom, and Eddie tells him to fuck the fuck off, asshole.

The place is more expensive than the other two motels, and it shows. The room is bigger, the beds more small double than single, and the bathroom has one of those huge power showers. Richie frantically pretends to be interested in the pictures adorning the wall, all of them cowboy themed, when Eddie yanks of his shirt on the way to the bathroom, proclaiming loudly that he was going for the first shower.

He slams the door a little too roughly.

Maybe Eddie is testing him, Richie thinks. Maybe he has seen the way Richie looks at him, and he’s trying to see if Richie, his gay friend Richie, looks at him like that. Richie is terrified; terrified of what Eddie will do if he catches Richie _looking_. 

That night, they talk for a little while over the expanse of the room about the museum, about Bev’s phone call, about whether Bill would get a better ending to his film, and about what they would do tomorrow. Eddie insisted that they should head back up the 35 and go toward Santa Fe, and Richie had no problem agreeing. He totally wanted to see Eddie surrounded by those arty farty types.

Richie falls asleep first, limbs stiff and arms curled around his pillow, and hoped that he wouldn’t have nightmares, because that would be entirely embarrassing. Before going back to Derry, he’s sleeps had been broken my dreams he couldn’t remember and voices he couldn’t place, but he’d usually wake up with a a sense of dread and loneliness and names on hos tongue that he would forget the moment he said them. 

Now...now he doesn’t want to think what his nightmares would be like. He imagines seeing the Deadlights again. He imagines Eddie bleeding, Stan crying, Bill, Ben, Bev and Mike cowering from It-

He’s half asleep, heavy breathing and all, when he feels the mattress shift.

Richie starts, ready to aim a punch in his confused state, when a voice snaps, ‘Don’t you dare fuckin’ swing for me, asshole. The fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ Richie stares into the blurred darkness, heart hammering and stomach swirling, to see the blurry outline of Eddie half crawling into his bed. He can’t see Eddie’s face, and hates it. ‘I-’ The blurry outline starts. ‘Look, can I just fuckin’ sleep with you tonight? It’s been real fuckin’ calming the last few nights, and I don’t wanna dream about that demon shitting _clown_-’

Richie’s heart might burst out of his fucking chest. He snorts and nods, blinking quickly, as if that will make his eyesight any better, and shuffles up the bed. 

They’re awkwardly quiet as Eddie shuffles into bed, all warm and silky from his pyjama trousers, and Richie doesn’t quite know what to do with his arms. Eddie mutters a quiet thanks, and Richie just replies, ‘Can’t keep your damn hands off me, can you, Kaspbrak?’

Eddie reaches back to hit him, Richie catches his wrist, and neither one of them try to let the other go. 

They settle to sleep like that, until Eddie brings his arm around to his front, dragging Richie’s arm with him and, yeah, Richie loves him. He _loves _him. Eddie needs this comfort. Richie gets it. It’s nothing more than that, but Richie can live with it. He’s not half as fucking selfish as people think he is. 

And a part of him, a small tiny part of him, sings at the idea of Eddie wanting Richie as close to him, as Richie wanted Eddie to himself. 


	9. Chapter 9

Eddie is a moody shit until they reach Santa Fe.

Perhaps it’s because they started driving at 6 AM and get to Santa Fe around 1 PM. Perhaps it’s because Richie had poked a little _too _much fun in his anxiety ridden mind at Eddie, who he had woken up next to in a tangle of limbs and noses pressed together. Perhaps it’s sitting in a car for seven hours. Perhaps it’s...perhaps it’s spending too much time with Richie.

Richie gnaws at his thumbnail as Eddie shuffles out of the car, dark eyes scanning the expanse of sandy looking buildings and neat flower arrangements and rocky mountains in the distance. Richie looks at Eddie and Eddie looks out to scenery, awe and wonder evident on his face. To Richie, this is familiar. This warmer it gets and more than land turns rocky, the more he feels like he’s getting closer to L.A. To his home. To where Eddie will stay with him for...

God, Richie doesn’t know. Maybe this whole trip has made Eddie realise that he doesn’t want to crash with Richie, after all-

‘Look, will you stop with the fuckin’ pissy stare, Rich? I’m motherfucking _sorry _for being shitty, okay?’ Eddie is staring at him over the top of the car, and Richie blinks back into awareness. He wasn’t even aware he had been giving a pissy look. Shit, did his thinking face look like he was being pissy? What the fuck was wrong with his _face_?

Instead of saying any of this, and instead of pointing out that he had rarely heard Eddie apologise as a kid so, shit maybe they were all grown up, Richie quips, ‘I’m used to you bein’ a fucking brat, Ed’s’.

Eddie glowers over the top of the red car, and Richie tries not to find it endearing that Eddie’s chin just above reaches the roof. ‘Don’t fuckin’ call me that! And I’m not a _brat_-’

A flock of birds fly overhead, and their twittering mixes in with Richie’s outraged laughter. ‘Oh-ho! If only the other Losers were here to hear _that_!’ Richie flips his keys and locks the car, already turning on his heel and heading toward the hustle and bustle of Santa Fe. He wanted to hunt down some hippies. And didn’t that O’Keeffe lady who made everything a vagina have a museum here?

He hears Eddie scrambling after him. ‘I am _not _a fuckin’ brat!’

He stumbles to Richie’s side, wearing a fucking polo and chinos and some form of fucking sandal, and Richie thinks that Eddie could not look anymore out of place. Everyone they passed in the streets wore dresses and flowy things; all artsy and..._wicker-y. _Richie might actually fit in for once, with a loose floral button up and ratty jeans. 

He doesn’t quite know how to take that. 

Then, Eddie gets that excitement he seems to get every new place they go, and Richie really considers that fact that Eddie hadn’t seemed to have been anywhere but Derry and New York. He’d never felt the sun like this; never felt what it was like to be so far away from that part of the world that the sun soaked into your skin and made you _forget_. 

So, Richie feels like maybe he should...make this special for Eddie. Maybe he should stop worrying about if he’s showing his feelings and just...just treat Eddie how he deserves to be treated. Not like Sonia Kaspbrak, or Myra Kasprak. Like Richie Tozier. 

Eddie looks momentarily surprised when Richie curls a hand around the smaller man’s wrist, and practically drags him toward an ice-cream parlour. It’s one of those places that dies everything from vegan to dairy-free, and Eddie swallow and stares at Richie when Richie says, ‘What d’you want? My treat’.

He remembers, quite suddenly, days of summer heat in muggy Derry, where he and Eddie would get each other cool drinks and ice-creams, in ways they never did any of the other Losers. As the man behind the counter approaches, wearing one of those old-fashioned ice-cream hats, Richie blinks stupidly down at Eddie, and he wonders if Eddie is remembering the same thing.

In the end, Eddie chooses a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of mango. Richie chooses chocolate and rum raisin. Eddie wrinkles his nose at Richie’s choice in that cute, cute, cute way, and takes all of a few minutes to entirely demolish his cone and ice cream. Seriously. They’ve barely left the parlour. 

Perhaps it’s the sun, or perhaps it’s because Eddie crawled into his bed last night, but Richie fills the silence as they walk down the street with things beyond his cracks and jokes. He talks about L.A, about his home, and the others, and how he wonders how they’d adapted over the last few days. 

Eddie replies in his usual way; serious and factual with a sprinkle of wide eyes blinking up at Richie, almost as if unsure. Almost as if he’s had someone correcting whatever he said for, I don’t know, _all his fucking life._

Richie hates the Kaspbrak women. Dead and alive.

They find the plaza, and the conversation has moved onto the memories of their youth; of reliving certain things and connecting the dots. ‘Remember when Ben planted one of Bev when she was in the Deadlights? Man, why didn’t someone do that to me?’

Eddie had snorted, and Richie noticed as he threw his half-eaten cone in a nearby bin that Eddie was _happy_. His forehead was beaded with sweat from the beaming sun, his mouth seemed to be twitched into an unbreakable grin, and his words were laced with never-ending chuckles. Richie was breathless at the sight. ‘Maybe because everyone was worried they’d fuckin’ catch something, _Trashmouth Tozier_. I can’t believe you use that as your stage-name, asshole’.

Richie tucks his hands into his pockets and tilts his head back against the sun. Somewhere nearby, he could hear violins and pianos and people laughing. ‘It’s catchy, alright?’

‘You sound like a gigolo,’ Eddie says. 

Richie snorts, opens one eye, and squints down at Eddie. ‘You wish’. Eddie wrinkles his nose. His cheeks flush pink. Richie grins. It’s Eddie who drags them toward the music, and Richie is dumbstruck when Eddie’s fingers grab his palm, not quite finding his fingers. 

He nearly trips over his fucking feet.

They reach where a crowd of people had started to gather around flamboyantly dressed people, all of them playing an array of instruments that seemed to work together in messy cohesion. Richie tries not to feel when Eddie drops his hands, and his purposely does not meet the look Eddie sends him as he does so. They watch, and Richie thinks this is like a date, right?

He becomes terribly fucking aware of the fact that everyone surrounds them in the plaza was either a family or a couple.

He hitches a breath as Eddie pushes a shoulder against Richie’s, and Richie pretends to watch the people dancing and playing music, when really he’s trying not to look down at Eddie.

The song ends, they clap, and then another one begins. Eddie points out of the loud violins, pianos, trumpets and harps, of all things, that Mike would really like this. He says so on his tiptoes, his head bent toward Richie’s. Richie, in return, crouches just slightly and dips his head toward Eddie, and nods when he hears Eddie’s words.

When he moves away and straightens up, he catches a woman turning back toward her husband, and the smile she sends Richie’s way is a knowing and sweet one. 

Richie feels sick and alive at the same time. Elated and terrified. Hopeful and humble. She thinks he and Eddie are a couple.

Richie, quietly, wishes they were.

He thinks of Bev’s phone call the day before; thinks of what would really happen if he leaned down and kissed Eddie right now. The man was standing close enough to Richie, real and solid and spewing some nonsense about how Myra hated the sound of live music. 

‘My mom did, too,’ Eddie mutters, and Richie _just _catches the sound. He looks up at Richie then, face serious and brow tight, and Richie tries not to look at Eddie’s mouth. ‘I think I might have actually married my mom, Rich’. All thoughts of kissing leave Richie’s head, then, because he’s too busy stifling his laughter with a hard bite against his hand. 

Eddie grumpily tells him to fuck off.

-

They find a hotel, this time, deciding to splurge a little. It’s not like they didn’t have the money. It’s not like they didn’t deserve to treat themselves, after everything. 

They have dinner in the restaurant at the bottom of the hotel, where the atmosphere is relaxed and the staff are chatty. Richie likes it. He’s always hated the stuffy places he’s sometimes dragged to in L.A. 

Eddie likes it, too. He practically bounces in his chair after they dump their stuff in a spacious and woody room, now wearing a near little button up shirt and dark chinos. Richie had even changed into something he thought was nice, but Eddie had aimed an almost fond, ‘_Really_?’ at Richie. 

Richie doesn’t understand why so many people have issues with his shirts.

They decide to have only one course, still a little full from the late ice-cream. Richie has chicken and Eddie has spaghetti, and once the waiter has left with their order, he shoots Richie a look and says, ‘Don’t, Rich’.

Richie nods, flattens his elbows on the table, and replies, ‘Whatever you say Eddie..._Spaghetti_’.

Eddie glares.

The food is good, and Eddie has wine whilst Richie has beer. They talk and laugh and, fuck, Richie can’t remember being this happy...can’t remember a day that he has loved _more_. He looks at Eddie over the small, round, wooden table, and thinks he’s going to start turning to goo at how sappy he feels about this fucking man. 

‘How the, uh, gaping hole in the chest, going?’ Richie asks, and Eddie scowls and tells him to fuck off and that, _thanks for asking_, it only tugged a little, now. 

Eddie looks at him the whole time, brown eyes all wide and Disney-like, and Richie listens to every word that falls out of Eddie’s mouth with rapt attention. They talk, briefly, about Stan, and Eddie sighs and says, ‘He could have made it with us, Rich’.

Richie pulls a tired face, rubs his chin, chugs his beer, and replies, ‘Shit. I know, Ed’s’.

Eddie doesn’t make a fuss at the nickname.

That night, they crawl into bed and little buzzed and a little giddy, and there’s two beds, and it’s _Richie _who leaves the bathroom last and climbs into _Eddie’s _bed. He hadn’t missed the fact that there had purposely been room for him to do so in the first place.

They’re sleepy and smiling and insult each other in the dark, and when Richie’s yanks the covers over them, Eddie turns to face Richie and scrunches a hand in Richie’s shirt and says, ‘Night, Rich’.

Richie feels something then, and he thinks it might be hope. 

‘Night, Ed’s’.

When he’s sure Eddie is asleep, and when he’s sure tiredness and beer will give him the courage, Richie blinks at Eddie’s blurry face in the darkness and, slowly, covers Eddie’s hand with his own.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a couple more chapter left of this my lovelies! thinking smut next chapter, so be waaaarned

‘I mean this is...this is insane, right?’

It sure as shit is, Richie thinks. Considering he’s lived on the West Coast for well over twenty years, he’s never bothered to to venture far enough out to see _this. _Richie nods, pushes his glasses up his nose, and tries not to reach for Eddie’s sleeve when the shorter man steps a little closer to the edge of the cliff. 

Eddie looks over his shoulder at Richie, nose a little red from sun exposure, and the back of his white polo a little damp with sweat. He leaves Richie a little fucking breathless, the idiot man, with the sun making his big brown eyes all glassy and pretty, and with his arms getting darker with tan. As he looks at Richie, words forming on his mouth, Richie tries not to think about that morning, when he had awoken to Eddie huffing and burying his face in Richie’s chest. 

Richie had tried not to have a heart attack. 

‘I can’t believe you’ve lived out here for this long, and you never came to see the Grand fucking Canyon’. 

‘It’s like an eight hour drive!’ Richie defends, because he thinks that’s a good fucking reason. ‘Plus, who the _hell _was I ever gonna come with?’ He feels dumb as shit the moment the words leave his mouth, but Eddie merely shrugs and turns back to the vast, beautiful, rocky landscape. 

‘Yeah,’ Eddie agrees, tucking his hands into the pockets of his shorts. Shorts that reminds Richie of the ones Eddie used to wear as a kid, funnily enough, though perhaps not as _scandalously _short. ‘I didn’t really have many friends back in New York, either. I had Myra, and I guess...I dunno, guess that felt like enough’.

Richie nods, though Eddie can’t see him. Somewhere, a child’s laugh echoes around the canyons. Richie stares at the back of Eddie’s head, wondering why he always has to be a few steps behind the man; why he couldn’t just suck it up and be as brave as he was when they were sleepy and tucked under the covers together in a motel room. 

So, Richie swallows his worry at touching Eddie too much (or being too close to him, or showing too much) and stumbles a little over the uneven ground and joins Eddie on the cliff edge. The shorter man glances up at him, manages one of those small smiles that make Richie’s chest hurt, and says, ‘You’re, uh, you’re still my best friend, y’know, Rich’.

And he thinks Eddie can see that spasm of awkward shock on his overly animated face, because as he glances down quickly at the brown-eyed man, Eddie rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t do that shit, Spaghetti!’ Richie defends, holding his hands up in his defence, a slow smile creeping onto his face. ‘You gonna get down on one knee? There any _secret photographers_ hiding behind the rocks I should know about-?’

Eddie rolls his eyes even harder, Richie snorts, and then Eddie is punching Richie on the bicep and snapping, ‘I was trying to be _nice, _asshole-!’

Richie, still laughing and still a little worried that maybe Eddie was hinting at something, at saying _friend_, throws an arm over Eddie’s shoulder, drags him close to his side (and Eddie’s warm, always so warm and soft and-) and replies, ‘Don’t get all worked up, Ed’s. You’re my _bestie_, too’.

Eddie shoves his side a little, but he doesn’t pull away. It takes Richie all of ten seconds to realise that Eddie is doing the opposite of pulling away, really. He’s taking a step closer to Richie’s side so that he isn’t leaning awkwardly, and then they’re flush against each other, Eddie’s arms crossing over his chest, and his body solid under Richie’s arm.

And Richie has one of those wonderful moments of anxiety ridden panic in which he wonders if he should remove his arm. He should, right? But then...why would Eddie step closer to him? Jesus, why couldn’t shit be as simple as when they were kids, when they’d crawl into Ben’s hammock together and kick at each other and Eddie would curl against Richie and they’d read comics and-

‘Richie?’ Eddie says, quiet and with an ounce of knowing in his tone. Richie tries not to stiffen in hesitation, he really does, but he’s fucking sure Eddie can feel it. He can feel every inch of Eddie; every bone and muscle, pressed hot against Richie’s side. Richie grunts. Eddie nudges his head against Richie’s chest. ‘Just enjoy the fucking sights, will you?’

Perhaps, Richie thinks, that’s why he has always loved Eddie so much. Eddie was able to know what Richie was thinking before Richie did. He would hold out a tissue for Richie, brought from his fanny-pack, when Richie was about to sneeze. He would buy Richie an ice-cream without Richie needing to ask. He would open his bedroom window without Richie eve having to tap at the glass, knowing, Richie thinks, the sound of Richie’s footfalls on crunching leaves. Even now, even decades later, Eddie Kaspbrak knew Richie Tozier all too well.

And that terrifies, Richie. Terrifies him to think that Eddie _knows_. That Eddie _sees_. 

Somehow, in some small part of Richie that dares to hope, he thinks that he might not be the only person in this duo stumbling around learning that love again. 

He hopes. He hopes. He _hopes_. 

-

‘You ever seen that film 127 hours?’

‘Richie, _why the fuck_ would you mention that now?’

Richie can only swallow his smile as he clambers after Eddie. It was getting darker now, the sky being swallowed by hues of dark orange and purple, and Richie thinks that they might be lost. 

Well, he knows they’re lost. Eddie has reminded him so about five hundred times. 

They’re clambering along a path that rises and falls every meter, and Richie thinks it’s kind his fault they’re down here, anyway. He’d insisted to Eddie that they clamber down from their perch and explore a little, and now it’s getting a little difficult figuring out where they came from, where they parked the car, and where the fuck the path out of this canyon is. 

He’s starting to feel a little guilty now, because even though Eddie is healing well, it’s still a little shitty for him to be clambering over slopes and under low rock formations. So, yeah, maybe Richie is lingering a little too closely to Eddie’s back, and maybe every time they make their way over a slope, Richie is holding his hands out in front of him, as if expecting to catch Eddie-

Eddie looks sharply over his shoulder, then. ‘Richie, I swear to fucking God, if you don’t stop hovering like a fucking mother hen I’m going to kick you in the di- ow, _fuck_!’

Richie knows he’s one for overreacting. It’s in his nature to be loud and _funny _and make a huge deal out of things, it’s usually how he attempts to dispel any awkwardness or panic. And maybe his reaction now only shows how fucked up it made him seeing Eddie in the sewers, dirty and covered in blood and turning that horrible shade of pale. 

He practically hurls himself over to Eddie, grabs the down-turned face of the man who is swearing and grimacing as he holds his forehead, and drags Eddie to look up at him. ‘What the fuck happened?’ Richie asks, fingers curling around Eddie’s cheeks as he scans the scrape on Eddie’s forehead, joining the healed marks there for the fight with the fucking clown. 

Richie wastes no time in drawing one hand away to reach into Eddie’s shorts pocket, to which the other man yelps, and pull out the clean tissue he fucking _knew _would be there. He tells Eddie to shut the hell up as he scoops one hand around the back of Eddie’s head, fingers finding the short hairs of Eddie’s hairline, and uses the other to press the tissue against the bloody scrape.

Eddie stares up at him, oddly quiet for once, and Richie swallows tightly as he blinks rapidly, ridding his minds eyes of Eddie with his chest open, Eddie dribbling blood as he looked down at Richie, Eddie dying, Eddie _dead_-

‘Rich,’ Eddie murmurs, and Richie starts violently when he feels Eddie hand curl around his own, the one that might be holding Eddie’s face a little too tightly. ‘I’m _good_, Rich’.

He’s looking at Richie with that hesitant, knowing look that makes Richie feels about two foot tall. Richie nods jerkily, swallows tightly, and loosens his grip on the back of Eddie’s neck. ‘I-’ he chokes, voice hoarse and mind whirling, whirling, whirling. His mouth spews out words with little time for his mind to consider what he’s saying. He wonders if this is what suppressed PTSD is. He did wonder when the dreams he had at night would haunt him in his waking hours. ‘Sorry. Just - reminded me of...of It and when y-you-’ 

Eddie blinks, manages a small smile, and pats Richie’s hand. ‘You sound like Bill,’ he says, to which Richie snorts. 

Eddie other hand pulls Richie’s away from his forehead, and he grimances when he sees the slightly bloody tissue. ‘Fucking low hanging rock,’ he mutters, flicking his gaze over to it.

Richie looks, too. He wonders if it’s normal to hate a _rock_. Richie drops his hands to his sides, freeing them of Eddie’s and mind settling itself. He’s starting to feel warm with embarrassment when he realises just how he had acted. _Jesus_. Eddie was going to think he was a fucking-

‘C’mon,’ Eddie says, kicking his shoe against Richie’s. ‘I’m gonna start getting a killer fucking headache soon, and I’m pretty sure I saw a path up that way’. He’s looking at Richie with that careful look, that small smile. ‘Then you can be Nurse Tozier as much as you want’.

Richie snorts, rubbing the warmth from his face with a quick hand. Sliding his glasses back onto his nose, he coughs and nods, shoulders stiff. ‘Lead the way, Ed’s’.

Eddie keeps looking up at him, though. Eyes wide and big and stubble dotting the lining of his jaw and, what the fuck, was he _blushing_? ‘I’m probably gonna fall again,’ he says, to which Richie narrows his gaze. ‘And it’s getting darker’.

‘You trying to say you wanna camp out here, Ed’s? Because I was joking when I mentioned 127 hours-’

Eddie glares. ‘No, asshole. I was saying I’m going to fucking hold your God damn hand whilst we walk, alright?’

Richie thinks he might actually be morphing into the same mess of a teenager he was years ago, because he practically turns fucking puce when Eddie grabs his hand (and Richie wonders of his palm is sweaty), looks at Richie for a solid ten second as if waiting for Richie to say no, and then nods. Richie thinks he might be gaping. Fuck, he _knows _he is. 

They start walking, and Richie wonders when the last time he held someones hand was. Eddie’s is warm in his, and he thinks of the circle when they were kids, the blood pressed between their palms and Eddie’s fucking broken arm with the red letters scrawled across white. He thinks of Eddie’s absent ring on his ring finger, and the pale skin pressed between Richie’s.

He’s smiles secretly when he says, ‘Y’know, if you wanted to hold my hand, Ed’s, you didn’t have to pretend to whack your head-’

‘Richie,’ Eddie replies, ‘Shut the fuck up’.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said smut this chapter, but next one, i promise!

Eddie died.

The dream seems less like a dream, and more like a reality. Still, he _knows _it’s a dream. He knows, because even in the horrible dream, where he presses his sobbing face to Eddie’s bloody cheek and holds him, nudging away the tugs of multiple hands (the others, the Losers) he knows that this isn’t real. He knows that Eddie didn’t die; that Eddie was asleep with him in bed right now, after they had stumbled to a nearby hotel and Richie had dabbed at Eddie forehead with a wet tissue. 

He knows all of this.

That doesn’t stop him from waking up with a sharp, almost painful fucking gasp. It doesn’t stop him from scrambling into the covers with searching hands, heart jumping when he feels the solid form next to him. The solid form which swears, scrambles, and thumps Richie in surprise.

And maybe Richie isn’t entirely sure what’s happening, because the room they had bought for the night was dark, and his glasses were off, and-and fuck, he might be crying. He might be having a fucking panic attack and, shit, this isn’t mortifying at all, is it?

He sobers up only when the blurred voice becomes louder, and the hand on his shoulder become more solid, and then his glasses are being slammed onto his face with such force, he’s half sure his nose is broken. 

‘Fucking _Jesus_, Eddie!’ The words are a jumbled, choked mess of a voice thick of both crying and sleep, and hands that come up to wipe furiously at his cheeks. He nearly knocks the glasses off.

He can’t see Eddie, mostly because Richie is staring furiously at his lap, but he can feel him; can hear him. Eddie is grasping his shoulder tightly, his warmth surrounding Richie, and his voice is low and frantic and he’s speaking a billion words a fucking second. ‘-What the fuck _happened_? You scared the fucking shit out of me! You were shouting and moving about and shit - and you’re fucking crying. _Jesus_, Rich, what the fuck? Are you _okay_?’

Eddie shifts, and he does that thing he always used to do when they were kids. The thing with grabby hands and non-stop talking, until you’re kind of forced to look at him. Richie does just that, blinking away the drying tears and settling his breathing, and he look at Eddie, with a scar on his cheek and hair mussed, and is relieved.

Even though he knew it was a dream. 

The calmness settles and Eddie stops talking, he just stares all wide-eyed and frustrated and flushed, and Richie realises he should probably speak now. ‘Bad dream,’ Richie croaks.

Eddie frowns. Richie wipes at his cheeks. Eddie watches the movement, brow furrowed and mouth pressed tight. ‘What the _fuck _about?’

Richie gives him a look, because what the fuck else could it be about? Penny-_fucking_-Wise. The shit-head Clown. The bane of the Losers’ existence. The reason Stan was dead. The reason Eddie could have-

Richie swallows, Eddie frowns even harder. And Richie looks at him, because Eddie is fucking staring, so why can’t he? Eddie, alive. Eddie, here. Eddie, single and alive and here. Richie then thinks of the dream; thinks of how real it all seemed. He feels a bit lightheaded again. ‘I think-’ He stops himself, shakes his head, and runs a hand through his matted, curly mess of hair. ‘We should go back to sleep. Early start tomorrow, Spaghetti-’

Eddie doesn’t glare at him in the usual ‘shut the fuck up, Trashmouth’ way. No, Eddie glares at him in the ‘Eddie is pissed’ way. Eddie, with his rumpled white shirt and the pillow creases on his forehead. Eddie, whose eyes haven’t changed at all. Eddie who, in Richie dream, was pale and cold and his eyes didn’t see, as brown anymore, they-

‘I didn’t die, Rich’.

Richie’s breath staggers out of him, his eyes shut tight, and he shakes his head. It’s not fair, he thinks, that Eddie knows him so fucking well. It was the same when they were kids. Richie never got to hide anything. Well, apart from _one thing. ‘_Don’t,’ Richie replies, and he is quiet and choked and his voice his hoarse, and there’s no jokes here. Only the honest request that Eddie not bring it up, because he hasn’t…he’s never dreamt of it like that before, even when Eddie was in hospital. What he had seen…it seemed almost like what _could_ have happened. 

And then…then Eddie’s hand is sliding from Richie’s shoulder, and he’s touching Richie’s face, and Richie is blinking his eyes open and eyeing Eddie in the dark. Eddie stares, determined and tight-jawed. ‘You can’t keep secrets all the fuckin’ time, Rich. You were…were saying my name and shouting and crying, for fucks sake, so I _think _I have a fucking right to know!’

Richie shakes his head, feeling hopeless and stupid and wishing to fuck he was brave. Brave like Ben, who was always so sure of how much he loved Bev. He wonders if Ben ever dreams horrible things like Richie just saw; things that seem so horribly real and-and-

‘I think I-’ Richie grunts, fingers fisting into the covers of the bed, and pushing his glasses roughly up his nose. ‘I don’t fucking know! You ever feel like that fucking clown fucked us up forever? That..that some of the weird voodoo shit he could do stuck with us?’ Eddie blinks in the dim light, thoughtful and confused, and Richie groans. ‘See? I sound fucking _stupid_-’

‘You don’t’. Eddie says it quickly, roughly, his voice hitching and his shoulder bumping against Richie’s. ‘Is that, er…is that what your dream was? Did you…see something?’ Richie looks sideways at Eddie, who is uncharacteristically unsure. Brown eyes flt sideways to Richie, shiny from sleep, and Richie nods. 

‘Yeah’.

‘Well…’ Eddie wrinkles his nose, huffs, and turns to Richie. ‘Well…what the fuck _was it_?’ 

Richie opens his mouth, thinks of telling Eddie how Eddie had hovered above him, mouth frozen and agape and blood pouring from it, and how Richie had felt his fucking heart break, but he thinks, maybe, that is so close to a confession. An admittance. And, sometimes, Richie feels like he could do it, and that Eddie would feel the same, but years and fucking years of doubt have fucked him beyond belief. 

Eddie is grunting then, annoyed and with a heavy roll of his eyes. ‘Jesus, I can’t get you to stop talking half of the fucking time!’ He throws back the covers, stomping onto the thick carpet of the Hotel flooring, and turning to Richie with a pointed finger, crumbled pyjamas, and a heavy brow. ‘Man the fuck up, _Rich_’.

Richie is, momentarily, fucking flabbergasted. ‘Um, how _about _we go back to comforting me after my fucked up nightmare-?’

‘No!’ Eddie is doing that thing with his hands, the one where he throws them about like he’s karate chopping the air. Richie had always found it kind of funny when they were kids. Now he’s a little scared. That is, until he takes into account Eddie’s rumpled sleep trousers and tousled hair, then he kind of wants to touch the exposed juncture between Eddie’s neck and shoulder. 

Focus.

‘Well, what the fuck have _you _been dreaming about, you nosey fuck!’ Richie snaps back, not exactly enjoying the fact that he’s lumbered in the bed whilst Eddie stares down at him. Ungracefully, he scrambled out of the other side of the king size bed, glasses going askew and shirt riding up. He turns on his heel, rumpled and hoping he looks just a little foreboding. Eddie stares across at him, nose wrinkled. ‘_Well_?’ Richie pushes, a little put off that he probably looks fucking homeless. 

Eddie stares. And stares. He stares so long that Richie wonders if he’s broken, until he swallows, crossed his arms, juts his chin up, and replies, ‘The Kissing Bridge’.

Richie feels like someone has punched him in the chest. ‘W-what?’ He replies. He sounds all breathless and shit, and he hates his knack for never being able to hide his emotions. Eddie stares, his head tilting, and his face showing that smug look that Richie loves to hate. 

And then Eddie is doing the pointing thing again, and despite the fact that Richie can hear the wavering worry in Eddie’s voice, the man still manages to talk a million miles a minute. ‘You. On the Kidding Bridge. You were fucking crying, and shit, and I don’t know _why_, but you were wearing one of my fucking hoodies. I sure as shit know you haven’t touched my shit, because I’d fucking kill you, but it _felt real _and if that’s the kind of shit that you mean, then just fucking tell me, Rich-’

Richie’s mind is working a billion times over, because he had been at the Kidding Bridge, as Eddie waited for him at the Inn. He hadn’t been wearing Eddie’s hoodie, though. And he sure as shit hadn’t been crying. And he feels like he’s going to throw up, because he really thinks this might be it, the moment he just shuts his fucking mind up and says what’s been on his been for 27 fucking God damn years, and he thinks of Stan, of brave fucking Stan who stood up in the Synagogue and told his family he was a fucking Loser and that was okay and-

‘You died,’ Richie mutters, quickly and roughly and his throat tightens. ‘In the sewers. You were leaning over me, and then It..It _did _something, hurt you, and you were fucking bleeding all over me. _Everywhere_. And we had to leave you because the place fell, like it did with us, but there was no time to get you, and it fucking…’ Richie is shaking his head, fists clenched and face downcast. His words feel like a balloon about to burst in his throat. ‘And it broke my fucking heart, Ed’s. Leaving you there…fucking _alone_-’

He looks up, and Eddie is staring at him. He’s breathing so hard that Richie wonders if he might actually be having one of those phantom asthma attacks. His eyes are big and brown, and his jaw is tight, and Richie wonders if he’s said too much, too little, if he’s ruined it all and Eddie will leave him again-

‘R plus E,’ Eddie says, voice far more level that Richie’s. ‘Was that real, or what?’

Richie swallows, jerks his head, and replies, ‘Yeah…that was real’.

Eddie nods, as if Richie had just told him the weather. ‘And…and…that’s what would happened, if I’d-’

‘Died,’ Richie finishes. His heart is hammering a fucking drum beat in his chest. He doesn’t know whether to puke or run or approach Eddie. He doesn’t know what the fuck to _do_. 

Eddie nods again, thoughtful and quiet. He’s looking at the floor, now. Brow furrowed and arms lax at his sides. ‘Since when?’

Richie licks his dry lips. ‘Since we were kids’.

Eddie nods at the floor, breathes in deeply, and then he fucking smiles. Just a ghost of one, but Richie all but falls flat on his face when Eddie looks up, brown cocked a little, and says, ‘You gonna man the fuck up and tell me you’re in love with me, or do I have to force it out of you, dickwad?’

_Yeah_, Richie thinks, _I’ve had a heart attack and died, and this is some fucked up form of post-death brain shit. _‘Depends,’ he shrugs, brain stalling and words a little raspy. ‘If you’re gonna say it back, but otherwise that shit would be super embarrassing’.

Eddie rolls his eyes, and then replies, ‘You know what’s really fucked up?’ Richie blinks, heart stalling, and his jaw jumps when he swallows. Eddie stares with an exasperated expression. ‘When I was thirteen, I drew a fucking _heart _with an R in it on the fucking Bridge, Rich’.

‘Shit,’ Richie laughs, choking on surprise and elation and _fuck, fuck, fuck_. Eddie, beautiful fucking Eddie with his smirk and eyes and his beating fucking heart. ‘We’re fucking saps’.

He doesn’t remember his legs working, but he becomes kind of self aware when he’s at the foot of the bed, just a few steps from Eddie, who is watching him with wide eyes and parted lips, and then Richie is grabbing his warm cheeks, and Eddie is curling his fingers into Richie’s rumpled shirt, and-

And they’re fucking kissing. 

Richie is kissing Eddie.

And it’s quick and hard and Eddie is grasping at Richie sides and Richie is holding Eddie to him, and fuck, he feels like he might implode. He feels like fucking…_confetti_. Because this is it, this is as good as it fucking gets. 

Richie didn’t think it would happen like this, when he was a kid. He always thought it would be a quick kiss and Eddie’s bare legs pressed against his, but they’re older, now. Older and hungrier and, fuck, it’s been years. Years for not only him, but Eddie. Eddie, who loved him too. Eddie, who had always felt the same fucking way. Richie could weep, because those years he didn’t _have _to be alone. 

He wonders if Eddie is thinking the same thing, but he draws himself closer to Richie, hands rising to Richie’s shoulders and shorter body moving up against Richie’s. 

Eddie pulls away first, still grabbing at Richie in a way that Richie finds fucking funny, and he is breathing hard and his eyes are blown wide, and Richie thinks it’s possibly the hottest fucking thing he’s ever seen. ‘This is okay?’ Richie breathes. He thumbs across Eddie’s flushed cheekbones, below his eyes, and laughs when Eddie replies, 

‘You gonna tell me you wanna stop, idiot?’

Then Richie stalls because…because he doesn’t want to rush _anything_. He feels oddly fucking gentlemanly. ‘You sure, Ed’s?’

Eddie makes to step back, replying with, ‘Jesus, where are all those jokes about dick length and shit, Tozier? You’re sounding like-’

‘Oh, ho ho,’ Richie replies, drawing Eddie back with fingers curling around the shorter mans waist. ‘I’m just being polite, Spaghetti. You want Trashmouth Tozier to rock your world-’

‘Jesus. Don’t call yourself that when I’m about to sleep with you’.

Richie holds him, nervous and nearly shaking. ‘You’re, uh…You ever done this before? You know…with a _guy_?’

Eddie shakes his head. Richie nods. ‘Okay’. He then swallows a smile. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to deflower you’.

Eddie thumps him on the shoulder. ‘I’m not a fucking virgin, asshole! I’ve been married!’

‘Still _are_, Spaghetti Man! Oh, does this make me the _other woman_? How scandalous-’

‘Richie. Shut up’.

Richie grins, looks down at Eddie, and nods. He then thinks he should probably say something nice and meaningful, because he’s wanted this for fucking ever. ‘I, uh-’ He coughs, Eddie cocks a brow. He thinks Eddie knows exactly what he’s going to say. Eddie knows him better than anyone, after all. ‘I love you, Ed’s’.

And Eddie kisses him, and it’s reminiscent of the kisses young Richie dreamt about. Soft and sweet and quick, and then Eddie is looking up at him, older and rougher and just as beautiful. ‘Don’t fucking call me, Ed’s’.

Richie snorts, Eddie yanks him now. 

And as Eddie pushes him back to the bed, kisses on Richie’s mouth and nervousness practically exploding in the pit of both their stomachs, Richie hears Eddie mutter, ‘I love you, too, asshole’.


End file.
